The Secret Reading Club of Kabul

Please note the film does not have English dialogue or subtitles!

Director Shakiba Adil was born in 1985 to a completely different Afghanistan to the one she lived her influential teenage years in. Ultimately nothing was learned from Taliban’s rise to power in 1996, as history repeated itself in 2021 in an identically chilling manner.

An earth-shattering film is born from this religious dictatorship and the systematic erasure of the agency of women and girls. Videos, dialogues and secret recordings of events from two young women and one resilient schoolgirl living in Kabul show descriptive closeups of what happens, when women are shut into their homes.

The main characters are not helpless: a discussion club around Anne Frank’s diary is founded. Foreign languages are studied and martial arts are trained. The religious police believe all of this is about sex, in other words something dangerous and therefore forbidden. The schoolgirl, who studies German, is inevitably amused by this obsession.

None of the women want to leave their homes, but all of them still ponder moving away and some even do. Their experiences are heard in Finland due to this documentary, but in the end, is anyone listening?

Johanna Siik (translated by Laura Niittynen)

This film was pitched at the Love & Anarchy industry event Finnish Film Affair before it was completed.